PhotoNOLA, the seventh annual citywide festival of photography, kicks off Thursday (Nov. 29) with opening weekend events through Sunday. More than 40 exhibitions will run throughout December, including openings Saturday in several Uptown galleries.

For more information, see the following information from festival organizers:

PhotoNOLA 2012
The Seventh Annual Festival of Photography in New Orleans
November 29 – December 2, 2012

(New Orleans, Louisiana) The seventh annual PhotoNOLA takes place November 29 – December 2, 2012 with a broad range of photography exhibitions on display throughout the month of December.

Workshops, gallery talks, and lectures are also included in the schedule of events. Other independently produced events take place before and after the four-day festival lineup. Most events are free and open to the public.

PhotoNOLA festivities kick into full gear on Thursday, November 29, with two daytime workshops led by Aline Smithson and Lori Waselchuk. The evening features the PhotoGALA Benefit Party & Print Auction at the Musée Conti Historical Wax Museum, beginning with a Patrons’ Preview Party at 6pm and general admission from 7-10pm.

PhotoNOLA’s Education Day is Friday, November 30 and features a morning session focusing on the artist/gallery relationship and is led by Sasha Wolf, owner of the Sasha Wolf Gallery in New York’s Chelsea district. Mary Virginia Swanson leads the afternoon session detailing new markets for fine art images and explains licensing and reproduction rights. In the evening, two museums will host photographic programming. The New Orleans Museum of Art offers a special photo-focused Where Y’Art, including a lecture by their curator of photography, Russell Lord. And the Ogden Museum of Southern Art opens CURRENTS 2012, curated by Richard McCabe and is followed with our keynote lecture by Shelby Lee Adams.

PhotoNOLA’s portfolio review, with an international cast of more than 20 curators, editors, and gallerists, takes place December 1-2. On Saturday morning Deborah Luster will lead a walkthrough of her exhibition at the Arthur Roger Gallery and in the afternoon Jennifer Schwartz will present her Crusade for Collecting lecture at the Ogden Museum. Saturday evening’s PhotoWALK offers a public peek at the work of 65 rising photographers from across the country, all of whom are participants in the Review sessions. Receptions follow at photography exhibitions across the city with particular concentrations along the Julia Street and Magazine Street corridors.

Sunday, December 2, will include a lecture by noted photographer Henry Horenstein at the Ogden Museum, a portraiture workshop with Steve Pyke, and a wet-plate collodion demo at Homespace Gallery using a tent as a camera. The Contemporary Arts Center will host talks with Larissa Leclair, founder of the Indie Photobook Library and featured artist Priya Kambli. That night, galleries in the St. Claude Arts District will open their doors for a Sunday evening art stroll.